Are you getting the same awful rainbow-colored background image I'm getting?
I've never been a fan of photograph backgrounds - I love fractals so pretty much all of my chosen backgrounds have come from exoteric.roach.org.

My thoughts, by the way, are "bad". Not necessarily "ugly", at least Google picked decent backgrounds (except for the defuault). But I guess they threw their prized minimalism out the window.

Perhaps they're trying to promote google accounts. That would be good for their business, getting people to sign up for a google account - it keeps them coming back for more.

edit: That's exactly what they're doing. The background is awful and the only way to change it is to sign up for a google account.

Just to play devil's advocate, I'd recommend switching to the user customizable "iGoogle" -- you get to pick little widgets and a theme. So far my fav is "tea house", which changes with the time of day. Later on the happy little camper with the hat will be done picknicking and play his flute as the sunsets, while the frog is exchanged for ducks. There are plenty involving lingerie and sports cars tho.

The NYTimes website just put out an article on this yesterday, check it out (you may need to have a NYTimes account to access the article).

"Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods."
-Christopher Hitchens

Google (with the /ncr in front) still works without all this nonsense.

It's ironic that Google got its break on a simple, plain and effective look to contrast with all the web search slash portal idiocy of the 90s. And now what does it do? It goes and starts putting that exact same crap in.

The idea of a web search engine that is just a web search engine and not a corporate statement seems perhaps too difficult to grasp by these companies.

Originally Posted by brewbuck:Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

It's ironic that Google got its break on a simple, plain and effective look to contrast with all the web search slash portal idiocy of the 90s. And now what does it do? It goes and starts putting that exact same crap in.

Ah, but over the past decade net users have gotten increasingly comfortable with increasingly complex interfaces (all the web 2.0 stuff and social networking, and these wacky phones everyone seems to have, etc).

Of course it can be overdone, but here's a (sort of) shot in the dark: do you think as a programmer you yearn for a simplicity that non-programmers don't? I would assume Google does it's share of "market research" on these fronts:

The idea of a web search engine that is just a web search engine and not a corporate statement seems perhaps too difficult to grasp by these companies.

Hmmm....I scoffed at iGoogle initially but now I quite like it (mostly thanks to the "tea house" of course )